Karma

Schmidt Number: S-5619

On-line since: 31st January, 2019

III

Dornach, February 23, 1924

K

ARMA
is best understood by contrasting it with that other
impulse in man — the impulse which we indicate by
the word freedom. Let us first, in a very crude
way, I should say, place the question of karma before us. What
does it signify?

In
human life we have to record the fact of successive earth
lives. By feeling ourselves within a given earth life, we can
look back — in thought at least, to begin with —
and see how this present earth life is a repetition of a number
of previous earth lives. It was preceded by another, and that
in turn by yet another life on earth, and so on until we get
back into the ages where it is impossible to speak of repeated
earth lives as we do in the present epoch of the earth, for in
going farther backward, we reach a time when the life between
birth and death and the life between death and a new birth
become so similar that the immense difference which exists be-
l ween them today is no longer present. Today we live in our
earthly body bet ween birth and death in such a way that in
every-day consciousness we feel cut off from the spiritual
world. Out of this every-day consciousness, men speak of the
spiritual world as a “beyond.” They even speak of
it as though they might doubt its existence, as though they
might deny it altogether, and so forth.

This
is because man's life within earthly existence restricts him to
the outer world of the senses, and to the intellect; the latter
does not look far enough to perceive what really is connected
with this earthly existence. Out of this, countless arguments
arise, all of which actually are rooted in something unknown.
No doubt, you will have often stood among people and
experienced how they argued about monism, dualism, and so
forth. It is, of course, quite absurd to argue about these
catch-words. When people argue in this way, we are reminded of
some primitive man, let us say, who has never heard that there
is such a substance as air. It will not occur to anyone who
knows that air exists, and what its functions are, to speak of
it as something belonging to the beyond. Nor will he think of
declaring: “I am a monist; air, water, and earth arc one,
and you arc a dualist, because you regard air as something that
extends beyond the earthly and watery elements.”

All
these things are pure nonsense, as, indeed, are mostly all
arguments about concepts. There can, therefore, be no
question of our entering into such matters, but it can only be
a question of drawing attention to them. For just as the air is
not present for the one who knows nothing about it, but for him
is something belonging to the “beyond,” so for
those who do not yet know the spiritual world, which also
exists everywhere just as the air, this spiritual world is
something belonging to the “beyond;” but for those
who take the matter into consideration, the spiritual world is
something that belongs very much to this side. Thus, it is
simply a question of our acknowledging the fact that at
the present earth period the human being between birth and
death lives in his physical body, in his whole organism, in
such a way that this organism gives him a consciousness
whereby he is cut off from a certain world of causes which,
none the less, affects this physical earth existence.

Then,
between death and a new birth he lives in another world, which
we may call a spiritual world in contrast to our physical
world; in this spiritual world he does not have a physical body
which can be made visible to human senses, but he lives
in a spiritual nature. And in this life between death and a new
birth the world through which he passes between birth and death
is just as alien, in turn, as the spirit world is now alien to
every-day consciousness.

The
dead look down onto the physical world just as the living that
is the physically living — look upward into the spiritual
world, and only the feelings are, so to speak, reversed. While
the human being here in the physical world between birth and
death has a certain aspiration toward another world which
grants him fulfilment of much of which there is too little in
this world, or of which this world affords him no satisfaction,
he must between death and a new birth on account of the
multitude of events, and because too much happens in proportion
to what a human being can bear, feel a constant longing to
return to earth life, to what is then the life in the beyond;
hence, during the second half of the life between death
and a new birth, he awaits with great longing the passage
through birth into a new earth existence. Just as in earth
existence the human being is afraid of death, because an
uncertainty prevails about what happens thereafter — for
in earth life a great uncertainty prevails for ordinary
consciousness about what happens after death — so in the
life between death and a new birth the condition is just the
reverse, there prevails an excessive certainty about earth
life. It is a certainty that stuns the human being, that makes
him literally faint, so that he is in a state resembling a
fainting dream, a state which fills him with the longing to
descend again to earth.

These
are only a few indications of the great difference prevailing
between the earthly life and the life between death and a new
birth. If, however, we now go back, let us say, even only as
far as the Egyptian period, from the third on up into the first
millennium before the founding of Christianity — and,
after all, if we go back into this epoch, we go back to those
human beings who were none other than ourselves, in a former
earth life — indeed, then, at that time during earth
existence, life was quite different from our so brutally clear
consciousness of the present day. At present human beings have,
indeed, a brutally clear consciousness; they are all so clever
— I do not at all intend to be ironical — the
people of today are, indeed, all very clever. In contrast to
this brutally clear consciousness of today, the consciousness
of the human being of the ancient Egyptian period was much more
dream-like, a consciousness that did not, like ours, strike
against outer objects. It passed through the world, as it were,
without striking against objects. Instead, it was filled
with pictures which, at the same time, revealed something of
the spiritual existing in our environment. The spiritual
still penetrated into physical earth existence.

Do not
ask: How could a man with this more dream-like
consciousness, not the brutally clear consciousness of
today, have performed the tremendous tasks which were actually
achieved, for instance, in the ancient Egyptian or Chaldean
epochs? You need merely call to mind the fact that mad people
at times, in certain states of mania, possess an immense
increase of their physical forces; they begin to carry
things which they could not carry when in a completely clear
state of consciousness. It was, indeed, a fact that the
physical strength of the human beings of that time was
correspondingly greater, although they were perhaps of slighter
build than men of today. For, as you know, it does not always
follow that a stout man is strong and a thin man weak. But they
did not spend their earthly life in observing every detail of
their physical actions; their physical deeds went parallel with
experiences into which the spiritual world still extended.

And
again, when the people of that time were in the life between
death and a new birth, then far more of this earthly life
extended upward into the life beyond — if I may be
allowed to use the expression “upward.” Nowadays it
is exceedingly difficult to communicate with those who are
present in the life between death and a new birth, for
languages have gradually assumed a form no longer understood by
the dead. Our nouns, for instance, soon after death are
absolute gaps in the dead's comprehension of the earthly world.
They understand nothing but the verbs, i.e. the words of
motion, of action. And while we here on earth have our
attention constantly drawn by materialistically minded people
to the fact that everything should be defined in an orderly
manner, and every concept be limited and sharply defined,
the dead no longer know anything of definitions; they only know
what is in motion, not what has contours and is limited.

But in
more ancient times that which lived on earth as speech, that
which lived as usage and habit of thought, was still of such a
nature that it extended up into the life between death and a
new birth, and the dead still heard an echo of this long after
their death, and also an echo of what occurred on earth even
after their death.

And if
we go still farther back into the time following the
catastrophe of Atlantis — the eighth and ninth millennium
before the Christian era t lit* difference between the life on
earth and the life in the beyond, if I may so describe it,
becomes even more insignificant. And then, as we go
backward, we gradually reach the ages when the two lives
are similar. We can then no longer speak of repeated earth
lives.

Thus,
repeated earth lives have their limit as we look backward, just
as they will have their limit when we look forward into the
future. For what begins quite consciously with Anthroposophy
— the extension of the spiritual world into the ordinary
consciousness of man — will have the consequence
that this earth world will extend, in turn, into the world
through which we live between death and a new birth; but, in
spite of this, our consciousness will not grow dream-like, but
clearer and ever clearer. The difference will once again grow
less. So that this living in repeated earth lives is limited by
outermost boundaries, which then lead into quite another
sort of human existence, where it is meaningless to speak of
repeated earth lives, because the difference between the
earthly and the spiritual life is not so great as it is
today.

If we
now assume, however, for the long stretch of the present period
of the earth age that behind this earth life there lie others
— we must not say countless others, for they can even be
counted by exact spiritual- scientific research — if we
say: behind our present earth life there lie many others, then
we have had certain experiences in these previous earth lives
which represented certain relationships between human beings.
And the effects of these relationships between human beings,
which at that time lived themselves out in what we then
underwent, extend into this present earth life in the same way
as the effects of what we do in this present earth life extend
into our next lives on earth. Thus, we have to seek in the
former earth life the causes of much that now enters into our
present life. Then it is easy for the human being to say:
“Thus, what I experience now is conditioned, caused. How
can I, then, be a free human being?”

Now,
this question is, indeed, a rather significant one, if we
consider it in this way. For all spiritual observation shows
that in this way the subsequent earth life is conditioned by
the earlier ones. On the other hand, the consciousness of
freedom absolutely exists. And, when you read my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
you will see that we cannot
understand the human being at all, if we are not clear about
the fact that his whole soul life tends, is directed, is
oriented toward freedom, but a freedom which we have to
understand correctly.

Now,
it is precisely in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
that you will find an idea of freedom which it is very
important to grasp correctly. The point is that we have
developed freedom, to begin with, in thought. The fountainhead
of freedom is in thought. Man has an immediate
consciousness of the fact that he is a free being in his
thought. You may rejoin: “But there are many people today
who doubt the fact of freedom.” Yes, but this only proves
that the theoretical fanaticism of people today is often
stronger than their direct experience in reality. Because he is
so crammed full of theoretical concepts the human being no
longer believes in his own experiences. Out of his observations
of the processes of nature, he arrives at the idea that
everything is conditioned by necessity, every effect has a
cause, all that exists has its cause; thus, if I conceive a
thought, this has also a cause. He does not at once think of
repeated earth lives in this connection, but he imagines that
what wells forth from human thinking is caused in the
same way as that which comes out of a machine.

As a
result of this theory of universal causation, as it is called,
the human being blinds himself frequently to the fact that he
bears very clearly within himself the consciousness of freedom.
Freedom is a fact which we experience, as soon as we really
reflect upon ourselves.

Now,
there are also those who are of the opinion that the nervous
system is just a nature system, conjuring thoughts out of
itself. According to this, then, the thoughts would — let
us say — be necessary results, just like the flame which
burns under the influence of a fuel, and there could be no
question of freedom.

These
people, however, contradict themselves in talking at all. As I
have often related here, I had a friend in my youth, who had a
fanatical inclination, at a certain period, to think
materialistically. Thus, he said: “When I walk, for
example, then it is the nerves of the brain, infiltrated by
certain causes, which bring my walking into effect.” This
led, at times, to quite a long debate with him. I finally said
to him on one occasion: “Now, look here, you always say:
‘I walk.’ Why do you not say: ‘My brain walks?’ If you really
believe in your theory, you ought never to say: ‘I walk, I take
hold of things,’ but: ‘My brain walks, my brain takes hold of
things.’ Why do you tell a lie?”

These
are the theorists, but there are also the practical men. If
they observe any nonsense in themselves which they do not wish
to stop, they say: “O, I cannot get rid of that; it is
just a part of my nature. It is there of its own accord, and I
am powerless against it.” There are many such people;
they refer to the immutable causation of their own nature. But,
as a rule, they do not remain consistent. If they happen to be
showing off something they rather like about themselves for
which they need no excuse, but on the contrary are glad
to receive a little flattery, they then abandon the aforesaid
view.

The
fundamental fact of the free human being — a self-evident
fact can be directly experienced. Now, even in the ordinary,
everyday earth life it is a fact that we do many things in
complete freedom which, nevertheless, are of such a kind
that we cannot easily leave them undone. And yet we do not feel
our freedom in the least impaired through this fact.

Let us
suppose, for a moment, that you now resolve to build yourself a
house. It will take about a year to build it. In a year you
will live in it. Will you feel that your freedom has been
curtailed through the fact that you then have to say to
yourself: “The house is now there, and I must move in, I
must live in it; it is a case of compulsion?” No, you
will surely not feel your freedom impaired through the fact of
your having built a house for yourself. You see, therefore,
even in ordinary life these two things stand side by side: You
have committed yourself to something. It has thereby become a
fact in life, a fact with which you have to reckon.

Now
think of all that stems from former lives on earth, with which
you have to reckon, because it is due to your own deeds —
just as the building of the house is caused by you. Seen in
this light, you will not feel your freedom impaired through the
fact that your present life on earth is determined by former
ones.

Perhaps you will say: “Very well. I will build me a
house, but I still wish to remain a free man. I will not let
myself be compelled. If I do not like it, I shall, in a year,
not move into the new house; I shall sell it.” All right!
We might also have our opinion about such a procedure; we
might, perhaps, have the opinion that, if you do this, you are
a person who does not know his own mind. Indeed, we might well
have this opinion; but let us disregard this. Let us disregard
the fact that a man is such a fanatical upholder of freedom
that he constantly makes up his mind to do things, and
afterwards out of sheer “freedom” leaves them
undone. We then might well say: “That man has not even
the freedom to enter upon the things he himself resolves upon.
He constantly feels the goad of the will to be free and is
positively persecuted by his fanatical worship of
freedom.”

It is
really important that these things not be taken in a rigid,
theoretical manner, but be grasped in fullness of life.
Let us now pass over to a more complicated concept. If we
ascribe freedom to man, surely we must also ascribe it to the
higher beings who are not hampered in their freedom by the
limitations of human nature. If we rise to the beings of the
higher Hierarchies, who certainly are not hampered by the
limitations of human nature, we must, indeed, seek a higher
degree of freedom with them. Now someone might propose a rather
strange theological theory to the effect that God must surely
be free; He has arranged the world in a certain way;

He
has, however, thereby committed Himself; He certainly cannot
change the world-order every day; thus, after all, He would in
that case be unfree.

You
see, if in this way you place in antithesis inner karmic
necessity and freedom, which is a fact of our consciousness,
which is simply a result of self-observation, you cannot then
escape a continuous circle. In this way you cannot escape from
a circle. For the matter is as follows: Let us take once more
the illustration of the building of a house. I do not wish to
press this example too far, but at this point it can still help
us along the way. Someone builds himself a house. I will not
say: I build myself a house — I shall probably
never build one for myself — but, let us say, someone
builds himself a house. Well, by this resolve he does, in a
certain respect, determine his future. Now, when the house is
finished, and he takes his former resolve into account, no
freedom apparently remains for him, so far as the living in the
house is concerned. He himself has certainly set this
limitation to his freedom; nevertheless, apparently no freedom
remains for him.

But
just think, how many things still remain for you to do in
freedom within this house, Indeed, within it you are even free
to be stupid or wise, you are free to be horrid or lovable to
your fellow men. In the house you are free to get up early or
late. Perhaps, you may be under other obligations in this
respect; but so far as the house is concerned, you are free to
get up early or late. You are free to be an anthroposophist or
a materialist within this house. In short, there are
innumerable things still at your free disposal.

Likewise, in an individual human life, in spite of the presence
of karmic necessity, there are countless things at your free
disposal, far more than in a house, countless things fully and
really in the domain of freedom.

Here
you may, perhaps, be able to rejoin: “Very well, we do
then have a certain domain of freedom in our life.”
Indeed, that is so: a certain enclosed domain of freedom
surrounded by the karmic necessity (see
Figure III).
Now,
looking at this, you may assert the following. You may say:
“Well, I am free in a certain domain; but I now reach the
limits of my freedom. I then feel the karmic necessity
everywhere. I walk around in my room of freedom, but everywhere
at the boundaries I come up against my karmic necessity and
sense this necessity.”

Figure III

Indeed, my dear friends, if a fish thought likewise, it would
be extremely unhappy in the water, for as it swims in the
water it reaches the water's boundary. Outside of the water it
can no longer live. Hence it refrains from going outside of the
water. It does not go at all outside of the water; it remains
in the water, it swims around in the water, and it just lets
alone the other element which lies beyond, be it air or
something else. And because the fish does this, I can in assure you that it
is not at all unhappy over the fact that it cannot breathe with
lungÂ«. It does not occur to it to be unhappy. But,
if ever it did occur to the fish to be unhappy because it
breathes only with gills and not with lungs, then it would have
to have lungs in reserve, then it would have to compare the
difference between living down below in it lie water, and up in
the air. Then the fish's whole way of feeling itself inwardly
would be different. It would all be quite different.

If we
apply this comparison to human life with respect to freedom and
karmic necessity, then it is a fact, in the first place, that
the human being in the present earth period has the ordinary
consciousness. With this ordinary consciousness he lives in the
sphere of freedom, just as the fish lives in the water, and
with this consciousness he does not enter at all the realm of
karmic necessity. Only when he begins really to perceive the
spiritual world — this would be similar to the fish
having lungs in reserve — only when he really finds his
way into the spiritual world, does he acquire a perception of
the impulses living in him as karmic necessity.

He
then looks back into his former lives on earth and does not
feel, does not say, on finding the causes of his present
experiences in a previous earth life: “I am now under the
compulsion of an iron necessity, and my freedom is
impaired,” but he looks back and sees how he himself has
fashioned what now confronts him, just as someone who has built
himself a house looks back on the resolve which led him to
build it. And we generally find it more reasonable to
ask: “Was it, at that time, a sensible or foolish resolve
to build this house?” Well, naturally, we can come later
on to all sorts of opinions on the matter, if the things turn
out in a certain way; but, if we find that it was an enormous
stupidity to build the house, we can, at best, say that we were
foolish.

Now,
in earth life it is an awkward matter in regard to anything
which one has inaugurated to have to say that it was stupid. We
do not like this. We do not like to suffer from our own
follies. We wish we had not made the foolish decision. But this
really applies only to the one earth life, because between the
foolishness of the resolve and the punishment we suffer
in having to experience its consequences there lies the same
earth life. It always remains thus.

But
this is not so between the individual earth lives. For between
them always lie the lives between death and a new birth; and
these lives between death and a new birth change many things
which would not change if earth life were to continue
uniformly. Just suppose that you look back into a former earth
life. There you did something good or ill to another human
being. The life between death and a new birth took place
between this previous earth life and the present earth life. In
this life, in this spiritual life, you cannot think otherwise
than that you have become imperfect by having done something
evil to another human being. This takes away from your value as
a human being. It cripples you in soul. You must repair the
crippling, and you resolve to achieve in a new earth life what
will make good the fault. Thus, between death and a new birth
you absorb by your own will that which will compensate for the
fault. If you have done good to another human being, you then
know that the whole of human life is there for the whole of
mankind. You see this most clearly in the life between death
and a new birth. You then realize that when you have helped
another human being, he has thereby achieved certain
things which, without you, he would not have achieved in a
former earth life; but, as a result, you feel again united with
him in the life between death and a new birth, in order now to
live and to develop further what you have achieved together
with him in regard to human perfection. You seek him out again
in a new earth life in order, in this new earth life, to work
further with him through the way you have already helped him
perfect himself.

The
fact is not at all that we might abhor such necessity, when we,
through a real insight into the spirit world, now perceive the
scope of this karmic necessity all around us, but the fact is
that we look back upon this necessity and see how the things
were which we ourselves had done, and then behold them in such
a way that we say: “What occurs out of inner necessity
has to happen — out of complete freedom
also it would have, to happen.”

We
shall never have the experience of possessing a real insight
into karma without being in agreement with it. If things result
in the course of karma which do not please us, then we ought to
consider them from the point of view of the general laws and
principles of the universe. And we shall then realize more and
more that, after all, what is karmically conditioned is better
than our having to begin anew, better than our being a book of
blank pages with every new earth life. For, as a matter of
fact, we are ourselves our karma. We are ourselves that which
comes over from previous earth lives. And it has no sense at
all to say that something in our karma — alongside of
which there exists definitely the realm of freedom
— that something in our karma ought to be different from
what it is, because it is not at all possible to criticize the
single detail in an organically connected totality.
Someone may not like his nose; but it is senseless to criticize
merely the nose, as such, for the nose a man has must actually
be as it is, if the whole man is as he is. The one who says:
“I should like to have a different nose,” actually
says that he would like to be an utterly different man. But in
so doing he really eliminates himself in thought. This we
cannot do. Thus, we cannot wipe out our karma, for we are
ourselves our karma. Nor does it at all confound us, for
it runs its course alongside the deeds of our freedom, and in
no wise interferes with the deeds of our freedom.

I
should like to use still another comparison to make the point
clear. As human beings, we walk; but the ground on which we
walk is also there. No one feels interfered with in walking by
having the ground underneath his feet. Indeed, he ought even to
know that, were the ground not there, he could not walk at all;
he would fall through everywhere. It is thus with our freedom;
it needs the “ground” of necessity. It must rise
out of a foundation. And this foundation — we ourselves
are.

As
soon as we grasp in the right way the concept of freedom and
the concept of karma, we shall be able to find them compatible,
and we then need no longer shrink from a detailed study of the
karmic laws. Indeed, in some instances we may even come to the
following conclusion:

I now
assume that someone, by means of the insight of initiation, is
able to look back into former earth lives. He knows quite well,
when he looks back into former earth lives that this and that
has happened to him which has come with him into his present
earth life. Had he not attained to initiation science,
objective necessity would impel him to do certain things. He
would do them quite inevitably. He would not feel his freedom
hampered by it; for his freedom lies in his ordinary
consciousness with which he never penetrates into the realm
where this necessity acts, just as the fish never penetrates
into the outer air. But when he has initiation science within
him, he then looks back and he sees how things were in a former
earth life, and he regards what now confronts him as a task
which is consciously allotted to him for this present earth
life. This is, indeed, a fact.

What I
shall now say may sound paradoxical to you, yet it is true. In
reality, a man who possesses no initiation science practically
always knows through a kind of inner urge, through an instinct,
what he is to do. O, indeed, people always know what they ought
to do, feel themselves always impelled to this thing or that.
For the one who begins with initiation science, matters
become somewhat different in the world. As he faces life, quite
strange questions arise in regard to the individual
experiences. If he feels impelled to do something, he
immediately feels also impelled not to do it. The obscure urge
which drives most human beings to this or that is eliminated.
And, actually, at a certain stage of initiate-insight, if
nothing else were to intervene, a man could really come to the
point of saying to himself: “After having reached this
insight, I now prefer to spend the entire remainder of my life
— I am now 40 years old, which is a matter of
indifference to me — sitting on a chair doing nothing.
For such pronounced urges to do this or that are no longer
present.”

Do not
believe, my dear friends, that initiation does not have a
reality. It is strange, in this connection, how people
sometimes think. In regard to a roast chicken, everyone who
eats it believes that it has reality. In regard to initiate
science, most people believe that it has only theoretical
effects. No, it has effects on life. And such a life effect is
the one I have just indicated. Before a man has attained to
initiation, under the influence of an obscure urge, one
thing is always important to him and another unimportant. The
initiate would prefer to sit in a chair and let the world run
its course, for it really does not matter — so it might
appear to him whether this is done and that is left undone, and
so forth. It will, however, not remain so, for initiation
science also offers something else besides. The only corrective
for the initiate's sitting on a chair, letting the world run
its course, and saying: “everything is a matter of
indifference to me,” is to look back into former earth
lives. He then reads there from his karma the tasks for his
present earth life, and he does consciously what his former
earth lives impose upon him. He does not abstain from doing it
because he believes that thereby his freedom is encroached on,
but he does it. He does it, because by his discovery of what he
had experienced in previous earth lives he becomes aware, at
the same time, of what his life between death and a new birth
has been, how he then realized the performance of the
corresponding consequential actions as something reasonable. He
would feel himself unfree if he could not come into the
position of fulfilling the task which is allotted to him by his
former earth life.

Thus,
neither before nor after the entry into initiation science is
there a contradiction between karmic necessity and freedom.
Before the entry into initiation science, there is none,
because with every-day consciousness the human being remains
within the realm of freedom, while karmic necessity takes
place outside, like a process of nature. He has nothing that
feels different from what his own nature inspires in him. Nor
is there any contradiction after the entry into initiation
science, because he is then quite in agreement with his karma
and simply considers it reasonable to act in harmony with
karma. Just as you do not say, if you have built yourself a
house: “the fact that I must now move in is hampering my
freedom,” but just as you will probably say: “well,
on the whole it was quite sensible to build myself a house in
this neighborhood and on this site; now, let me be free in this
house!” so likewise the one who looks back with initiate
knowledge into former earth lives knows that he becomes free by
fulfilling his karmic task, by moving into the house which he
built for himself in former earth lives.

Thus,
my dear friends, I wanted to explain to you the true
compatibility of freedom and karmic necessity in human
life. Tomorrow we shall continue, going more into the details
of karma.